What are we looking at here? Well, it’s a Camry, that much is obvious. In the window is a sign for “Educators Against 5.”
What’s “5”? It’s a bill, recently passed in Ohio, which prohibits collective bargaining by public employee unions on issues such as health insurance, sick leave and pension benefits. Needless to say, it is massively unpopular among unionized public-sector workers in said state, many of whom view it as the first step towards “union-busting”.
The actual merits of the law are probably best discussed elsewhere. However, this is the third car I’ve seen in two days carrying the “No 5” sign… and all three have had a little credibility problem.
That’s right! The Toyota Camry is primarily built by non-union labor in Georgetown, KY. The other two “No 5” cars I saw were both Hondas — and Honda doesn’t play ball with the UAW in this country either.
During a recent press trip, I listened to an older journalist talk about the failure of certain newspaper unions in this country. He said, “I’m a union member. And I support the union. But one day I found myself shopping in Wal-Mart, and I guess at that point the whole idea of union solidarity had disappeared for me.” It’s a very interesting point. The unions in this country aren’t sticking together, and they haven’t stuck together in some time.
When I look back at the cars I’ve owned in my lifetime, the number of union-built cars far outweighs the non-union ones. I have five street cars and one race car at the moment, all built with union labor here, in Canada, or in Germany. Hell, I’ve purchased a few dozen suits that were made with union labor in the United States (Hickey-Freeman, Oxxford, and a few other American manufacturers continue to use unionized workers exclusively in the production of their American-made clothing.) Yet I’ve never belonged to a union. I’m not even a member of any automotive press association. Not much of a joiner, I suppose. I didn’t consider whether or not the cars were union-built when I bought them.
A lot of public-sector union member in Ohio have apparently decided that my tax dollars should go to support unionized labor… and it’s their right to feel that way. I do think it’s interesting, however, that they don’t seem to think unionized labor is good enough for them. They’re shopping at Wal-Mart, they’re buying clothing from countries where workers’ rights are less than a joke, and they are choosing their vehicles from providers which ban the UAW from their property. What message are they sending — and will they be surprised if a state full of temps, contractors, casual labor, and Honda employees fails to see things their way?
This should get interesting…
Thank you for your support of Union labor Mr. Baruth. (Now leaving quickly before the “brown stuff that isn’t mud” starts to fly.)
I don’t see where the fact that someone supports the right of people to organize means that person is going to buy any particular union’s product.
As for the car in the photo, that’s about a ’99 Camry. Did the owner by it new? None of the educators on my block are driving new wheels. When someone’s buying a used car they need for transportation and they don’t have the luxury of a big income, the Camry’s a no-brainer.
And while the bumper sticker might actually be on a car, this post wasn’t really about cars, was it, Jack? Find another windmill, Jack.
+1.
BTW, Jack, UAW isn’t banned from Honda, Toyota, etc. The workers at those plants have opted not to unionize. Pretty big difference, IMO.
I’m not a labor lawyer, but my understanding is that transplant factories tend to have generic “no solicitation” policies. I assume the UAW has been trying to negotiate an exception for an official organizing campaign at the plants they’re targeting, but other than Honda’s direct “we’re not interested,” the politics of their exclusion (or, in the possible case of VW, non-exclusion) are pretty opaque.
That’s my understanding also. Although I believe in the employee’s freedom to choose to unionize, or not, I can’t help but wonder what any union can do for its membership that hasn’t already been mandated by the US government.
In the case of the transplants, it is not like their American employees are being abused or brutalized by their foreign masters. Does anyone know, exactly, what the UAW offers the American employees of the non-union transplants?
Quentin,
The UAW is not permitted to come onto Toyota property and solicit. Having worked with transplant automakers in a non-journalistic capacity, I can tell you that the union situation isn’t as cut and dried as “the employees don’t want the union”. Most don’t, in my experience, but the critical aspect of locating in “right-to-work” states is that the UAW doesn’t have the right to come on the premises and organize the workers.
I’m no labor lawyer, but I thought:
– under federal law, a company can not impede an organizing drive (known as a card-check, where the employees vote up or down to invite the union in to organize);
– in a right to work state, a union may organize a facility, but it can’t force all of the workers to join the union; a so-called “open-” (or is it “closed-” IDR) shop.
Hopefully Conslaw, speedlaw (who I haven’t seen in forever) or pch101 will ring-in on this.
Ed & Jack – UAW isn’t allowed through the gates at a Toyota facility. But, the same goes for anyone that isn’t specifically invited to the plant. It isn’t a special UAW ban rule. If the workers go through the process (get enough signature cards to bring it to a vote, and then vote to be represented by UAW), the UAW would be welcome to the grounds. Basically, if enough of the workers wanted UAW representation, they have means to get it. You don’t have to have on-plant UAW solicitation in order to have UAW discussion with the workers, either. I know several transplant workers that have been contacted at their home by the UAW.
Hopefully Conslaw, speedlaw (who I haven’t seen in forever) or pch101 will ring-in on this.
Unions and the laws that govern them are a topic about which I know next to nothing. What you’ve said sounds right, but I really don’t know.
On the broader topic, Mr. Baruth raises an interesting point. I don’t have much of a position on the hypocrisy angle, but it is one of those anecdotes that accurately reflects the broader trend, namely that the union movement is badly wounded and unlikely to recover. They are no longer a force to be reckoned with, haven’t been for awhile, and aren’t likely to become one again.
The UAW hasn’t been banned from Toyota, They just won’t let anyone in without an invitation. And the workers haven’t invited them in. And probably won’t ever invite them in.They don’t have anything to offer anyone but a little less money in their paychecks and possibly even less benefits than they already have. And before any of you say I don’t know what I’m talking about, I helped build that car right there in Georgetown, I know better than any of you what the UAW can offer us, ask the good people of St. Louis how they like that Ford plant.
…union movement is badly wounded and unlikely to recover. They are no longer a force to be reckoned with, haven’t been for awhile, and aren’t likely to become one again…
Which is part of the reason why the middle class is evaporating. People are all for low prices when the buy that $30 Chinese made DVD player, but the real cost is far higher. America needs to manufacture more, union shop or not.
For what it’s worth the faculty at my high school drove a lot of American cars that were built by the UAW. Explorers, Cherokees, and Tauruses were pretty common in the staff parking lot…this in the late 1990s.
KixStart,
As noted in the original post, we are living in an era where “union solidarity” doesn’t exist… but that doesn’t mean it NEVER existed. Once upon a time, union members, regardless of the particular union, aggressively supported their “brother workers”.
Those days are gone, and the UAW was one of the first unions to suffer as a result. That’s the point of this post and it’s perfectly relevant to this website… in my opinion, anyway. AND UNTIL YOU, THE READERS OF TTAC, ORGANIZE INTO A PROPER UNION, YOU CAN’T STOP ME. :)
I agree that the traditional notion of “union solidarity” doesn’t have the same kind of clout that it used to have. There are likely plenty of reasons for this (e.g., globalization, the blurring of production boundaries, better labour laws, improved working conditions, and so on), but I tend to agree with KixStart that in the current environment, the right to unionize need not entail that unionized members only buy unionized products. The traditional connection between these things was a historically contingent one, not a necessary one. Of course, union members should still support of the possibility of forming a union as a means of collective bargaining for particular groups who choose to go that route, but I think most brotherhood obligations in our more recent labour climate have generally been limited to that. This is not to deny that we may have ethical obligations to labourers in other countries who are being treated less than fairly (to put it mildly, at least in some cases), but those kinds of ethical obligations apply to union and non-union workers alike and are generally of a different character than the kinds of ‘political’ affiliations and obligations that have typically been associated with the more traditional notion of “union solidarity.”
The building political pressures against unions, however, could very well change all that, and could result in a return to the kind of union ‘brotherhood’ that we saw in the past. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it started to happen all over again, but as it currently stands I see no inconsistency in working for a union and buying non-union products, at least not in our current, more heavily globalized economic conditions. Of course there’s an inconsistency when union members insist that you should buy their unionized products while they themselves buy Walmart (and I’ve had my tires spiked by ‘Big Three’ supporters when I first moved to this former automotive town), but that’s a different matter.
As an aside, I recall hearing someone on CBC radio interviewing someone from the States who was claiming that much of the current anti-union politics was actually a deliberate attempt to undermine one of the Democratic party’s major funding sources (and basically reduce the Democrat’s ability to fund their election programs). I don’t know how true it is, but it was an interesting take on the current union bashing that seems to be gaining momentum in the States.
The only non-union built car I’ve owned is a Subaru Outback which was built in Lafayette, IN.
All the other ones were built by unions in Munich, Torslanda (Sweden), and Trollhattan.
Perhaps union solidarity disappeared after general strikes were made illegal?
Jack,
I was born in Ohio, live in Texas, and am sitting in Nevada as I read this. Laughing my ass off at the irony of it all! My dad is a retired steelworker. As I was growing up, he would buy a new Ford F-150 every two or three years. He would take VERY good care of them and trade them in for a new one. The mill went bankrupt in 1984, was purchased a year later and reopened as a much smaller operation. (they went from 6,000 employees to 600 employees.) About 1994, my dad bought his first Toyota truck. When I pointed out that it A) wasn’t a Ford and B) wasn’t union made, my dad looked to his left and to his right, and then in a conspiratorial whisper said, “You know, it’s the best F#@$%ing truck I’ve ever owned!” Absolutely true story!
Tex
p.s. He’s since owned two more Toyota trucks, an Avalon, a Corolla and a Camry.
p.p.s. I own two Fords, a Honda and I’m guessing I’ll own a new Hyundai within the next 6 months. Just to clarify my own choices.
The big point this post manages to miss by a mile is that the teachers belong to public employee unions, which are radically different from trade unions. FDR, the father of New Deal, found the idea of public employee unions appalling. Simply put, the adversarial relationship that is the basis of bargaining between a labor union and a business can not be applicable to relationship with the government. All we have now is a mass of unionized public employees voting in politicians that give their union bosses and themselves more and more fat benefits. Busting of these parasites is not busing of UAW. I drive a vehicle built with union labor in Toledo, OH, I am perfectly happy with it, and I fully support putting public employee unions outside the law where they belong. There is no inconsistency or hypocrisity in that.
So you’re saying that public employees are voting in people to get ‘fat benefits’. The fact that unions are businesses designed to make money not withstanding, I’ll grant you there are probably some very wealthy bosses out there. But where exactly have you imagined these wonderful benefits these public employees are enjoying? I’d like a description.
Since this guys window placard is about education, why don’t you go look up the states that have banned collective bargaining for teachers. As of a few months ago there were 5 with no collective bargaining. Now go check their standing on quality of education based on college entrance exams. Go ahead… They would be last, last, last, last and 44th.
Are you daft?
For what they do, teachers are the most underpaid people in this country. We expect them to turn our kids into the minds that will shape the future of this country, and everywhere it seems people are aiming for their kneecaps. Yeah, unions make a buck, but they’re the only thing standing between you and a good education for your kids.
I know lots of teachers, I have many in my family, they all make a very good living (here in Michigan at least). The starting salary is low, but ramps up pretty fast to 50k or better and the benefits are amazing. I own my own business and if I made a million dollars a year I couldn’t buy health care as good as teachers get, packages like that are simply not available to individuals in the private sector. My wife is going for her teaching degree, and I’m gladly paying for her education, not because I care about the extra income but because I want in on the benefits. I pay about ten grand a year for my insurance and its not spit compared to what teachers in this state have. A couple years of that would pay for all of my wife’s education, and the pension doesn’t suck either (nor does the 180 day work year). I don’t begrudge teachers their living in any way, but the old chestnut of them being the ‘most underpaid people in America’ is absurd, teaching is a great job with solid pay and great benefits. I’d recommend the field to anyone.
I have many teachers in my family and hold the profession in high regard. That having been said, teachers (and government employees in general) are hardly underpaid. When you factor in not only gross wages which tend to be as higher than their private sector counterparts with liberal arts degrees, gold plated benefits, defined benefit pensions that also allow retirement with full benefits at age 52, and the 180 day work year for teachers, you have a pretty good comp plan. How many history majors that end up in retail (or MBA’s) have those benefits and that schedule?
In addition civil service protections make government employees virtually impossible to fire (see NYC teachers spending their days in “rubber rooms” because they are incompetent but cannot be fired).
Teaching is a critical job, but on the whole it pays well and is appealing because it is very family friendly (work schedule = kid’s schedule). That is why in most areas there are more applicants than available positions, which is the best way to measure if pay and benefits correspond with the market.
The kids are NOT getting a good education in the USA, we are ranked very low among industrialized nations and even many emerging nations. Teacherrs unions are part (but not all) of that problem. Face it, because denial ain’t healthy.
“The pay gap between government workers and lower-compensated private employees is growing as public employees enjoy sizable benefit growth even in a distressed economy, federal figures show.
Public employees earned benefits worth an average of $13.38 an hour in December 2008, the latest available data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says. Private-sector workers got $7.98 an hour.
Overall, total compensation for state and local workers was $39.25 an hour — $11.90 more than in private business. In 2007, the gap in wages and benefits was $11.31.”
http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2009-04-09-compensation_N.htm
Wow. This took all of about 5 seconds of searching and it’s not even Faux News.
Thank you Pete.
“Simply put, the adversarial relationship that is the basis of bargaining between a labor union and a business can not be applicable to relationship with the government.”
That’s ENTIRELY the point. Private-sector unions and public-sector unions are apples and oranges. And even FDR understood. It was JFK who let this barn door open. It needs to be shut…state by state.
Excellent post with great points Pete. Public employee unions are putting what are essentially taxpayer employees at odds with the taxpayers. That is an insane arrangement, especially when only one political party is structured to skim off the extorted profits.
The big point this post manages to miss by a mile is that the teachers belong to public employee unions, which are radically different from trade unions
You completely missed the point of the post:
-The owner of the car is presumably a union member…
-…Yet the car was assembled by non-union labor
-Question of the Day: An example of hypocrisy, or not?
Its not inconsistent at all. At some point someone needs to represent those who are being taxed to provide the benefits.
I get a kick out of stupid bumper stickers and glaring hypocrisy (and there is plenty from both sides on that front).
Sure, I wish teachers made tons of money, but they don’t and never will. That is the trade off for generous benefits, job security (for most), and not working 25% of the year. These unions champion tenure over performance, and this is the result.
I tend to believe what my eyes tell me. There are many more applicants than teaching jobs where I live. Therefore the jobs aren’t that bad.
I don’t generally like unions, but I bought a new car which was built in… OMG.. A UAW PLANT. THE SHAME.
The real WTF: The driver is apparently both a DARE supporter and a Grateful Dead fan.
Fuzzy,
That’s the first thing I thought. One DARE sticker vs. 3 Dead stickers, and they’re a teacher?!?! More likely a teacher’s kid who’s using the DARE sticker for cover and whose Mom (the teacher) made little junior fly the flag for the union.
With that being said, the hypocrisy is evident in driving a non-union car. However, I’m not anti-union or pro-union. Manufacturers signed contracts with unions, no one held a gun to their head. They needed the workers and that must have been the best deal they good negotiate at the time. Manufacturers need to stop bitching about the ramifications of deals to which they freely agreed, replete with press conferences, smiles and handshakes.
Also, employees can freely decide whether to work for a union or non-union shop. Stop complaining that “management is out to get us”. If anyone from your union local starts blathering that rhetoric you need to challenge them publicly and loudly because they’re simply fanning the flames to solidify their own power base.
Labor only makes up about 10% of the cost of a new vehicle. Unions didn’t kill anything single-handedly, it took poorly designed cars being poorly built. The whole organization is to blame, unions are a part of the problem, but they can’t be scapegoated for the entire problem.
I’ve owned one UAW-assembled car in my life.
It was junk.
Never will again.
That’s funny because I’ve owned 10-12 vehiclees and all of them have been union made and so far I’ve never had a bad one. Three of them were BMWs and not UAW made but the point is that unions make little differnce in the quality of cars.
I briefly belong to a union for a grocery store and while it was an OK experience, the union leader for my local was about as effective as, I don’t know what but she was useless when I had a complaint that needed addressing.
On the one hand, I see unions as a necessary evil in SOME instances, but really, most of them can disappear and with labor laws the way the are on the national level, the need for unions is MUCH less than it used to be.
In the early 1990’s, when we built our first plant in the US, we built it in an area that was near to an existing (unionized) plant owned by another division in our corporation (in order to use the existing human resource, accounting, and IT infrastructure, but not production personnel), but we built on the other side of town, just far enough away that it would not be considered to be part of the same plant (and therefore less likely to be unionized.)
We started out relatively small, but grew tremendously over the years, yet managed to keep the union at bay by keeping the plant under 500 employees and the wages and benefits competitive, i.e. not as much as local union members were getting, but close-enough that our employees didn’t see the point of closing the gap only to lose it to union dues and have the headache of union politics. It may never have been explicitly stated (perhaps it was but IDK) but it was also understood that unionization could put future investment, expansion, and possibly sustainability even, at risk.
When we built our 2nd plant in the U.S., we didn’t build it near the existing plant (same state, but not nearby). This was a major new project outsourced from a Detroit customer, and part of the deal to get that contract, was that we 1) had to locate it in an specific U.A.W. region (same region in which the OEM’s own plant was losing work due to the outsourcing – that it happened to be in the same state as our existing plant was partly coincidence partly due to getting good subsidies and a great price on a new facility abandoned by a bankrupt supplier) and 2) that we would invite the workers to unionize by promoting a “card-check” vote (so the U.A.W. could accept to let work flow out of an existing U.A.W. Big-3 plant.)
All things being equal, our U.A.W. folks work at a wage and benefit level appropriate to the surrounding area, but still significantly below the Big-3 W&B level; yet they are good, hard-working, dedicated and productive workers, no less competent than their non-union cousins in our other plant.
Funny thing about our non-union plant … after all those years of not joining a union, our company decided to pull a large portion of the production related to a certain production process and its line of products and move it to a low-cost country (to be fair, the workers will keep their jobs and there will be additional hires to support the expansion of a different product line, but even so, all those years of not-unionizing didn’t help to keep that product line and its 100 jobs relthere once somebody decided it would be more profitable to move to a low-cost country and use its generous subsidies to help offset the cost of a new plant.)
Not all unions are the same, some are contentious, others cooperative, some are lazy, others are productive, some are rigid, some flexible. I think a lot depends on the local mentality, and the relationship history between the management and the workers.
Regarding Jack’s observation: I can still recall hearing radio ads where they sang about “look for the Union Label”, and the union-folk took that seriously … they realized that they had to have one-another’s backs to remain successful (not to different from if we don’t want to spend ourselves into the poor house, it would be good if we could live within our means, consumption wise, and stop expatriating our dollars to China and the Middle East.)
There is a word which describes what Jack saw: it’s “Hypocrisy”. And I feel pretty confident that these same folks talking-union, but not “driving the talk”, don’t give a hoot about buying-union, but would be up in arms if the U.A.W. started pushing for school vouchers and privatization of the public school systems.
My problem isn’t with the UAW members and supporters who chose to boycott non-union-made products but rather, with those @ss-wipes who seek to shame, threaten and otherwise broughbeat others to do the same— or else.
The last time I checked the U.S. and Canada were built on free enterprise and the right to do legal and ethical business with anybody they choose, which includes the right to seek out the best bang for buck. Yet some UAW supporters would deny my right to not buy their products if they actually had the clout to do so. Fortunately they don’t.
The Detroit Three have the right to PROVIDE the above-mentioned best bang for buck— or to choose not to and then live or die with the consequences. It’s called a free market economy, folks. Everyone and every free country has the right to participate in it.
What’s good for the U.S. and Canada is also good for Japan. And South Korea, and Germany, and Great Britain, among others. To subscribe to the philosophy that we’re entitled to participate in a free market economy but our competitors are not would be the epitomy of hypocrate logic. And we’re not hypocrates, right? Uh… right?
The Big-3 were just as hypocritical, in that while their management whined about how the union used bully tactics to extort better pay and benefits out of the manufacturer, the purchasing agents of that very same manager extorted their supply base to make generous contributions to the United Way Fund, and of course, the management of those suppliers – to curry favour with their customer – took the task and then twisted the arms of their employees to make career-enhancing pledges to the United Way Fund.
For those not familiar, the United Way is not part of the UAW, but rather a joint-venture fund-raising organization representing some of the major charities in the Detroit area (once per year single point of contact rather than multiple contacts year round.)
Boy…for a group calling youself the B&B a lot of you missed Jacks point.
You have a pro union sticker,on a non union made car.
Jack is so right …Solidarity started dying somewhere around the 80 to 82 recession. The UAW/CAW buried the remains in 06- 07 after they signed the first “two tiered” wage agreement. Whatever we had once, is now gone. Replaced by self serving, Union “leadership” greed.
I recently removed the” Buy Domestic” licence plate bracket from my Impala in disgust.
If they bought the car used (and on a teacher’s salary, you bet your ass they bought the thing used) then what difference does it make who built the thing, anyway?
Check again, teachers’ salaries aren’t that bad, especially since many are female with working husbands. Starting salaries aren’t the best but still compare to private sector but with senoirity, salaries are better than private sector.
My wife is going through the process to become a teacher. For a job that requires a post-graduate degree, the pay is decidedly mediocre: my starting salary with a bachelor’s degree will be higher than hers with a master’s. Private school teachers’ pay is lower because the student body is generally easier to work with; this is pretty much a known tradeoff for anyone in the profession.
I’m going to overlook the “salaries aren’t that bad considering that most of them are female” comment, since this is coming from the guy who said that women shouldn’t be able to vote.
Aristurtle, my point was that most teachers are female and are in two-income, middle class families therefore they aren’t expected to be the primary breadwinner in the family.
Besides, salaries are very high for teachers with seniority. There was an article a couple months ago about teacher pay and a drivers-ed teachers in some northern state was making $165k/year. Don’t say that’s not excessive.
I never said women shouldn’t vote, I just said that everyone who didn’t agree with me shouldn’t vote. Lighten up, you liberals are way too thin skinned.
And the point you’re missing here is that this is the 21st century and you don’t have one “primary breadwinner” with the other person making occasional money or staying home. I’m even leaving gender out of this: the days when one person’s income easily supported oneself, one’s spouse, and 2.5 kids, with some savings for retirement, are over. It ain’t 1950 anymore.
I can’t comment on the specific article you’re talking about but I’ve never met a public driver’s ed teacher. Maybe at a community college? At my high school driver’s ed was something the gym teacher did after school. Every full-time driver’s ed guy I’ve known has been self-employed (and, yeah, usually doing pretty well for themselves, particularly from tuition for CDL classes, but that doesn’t speak for teachers in general).
And again, the with seniority thing depends on what you’re comparing it to. Many states require a teacher to have a master’s degree either before teaching or within five years of starting.
Apparently, many teachers in Michigan CAN afford new!
“More than 300 teachers in the region make more than $100,000 — double the median household income — and the average top wage for a teacher with a master’s degree and roughly a decade of experience is nearly $82,000, according to a survey of districts in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Livingston counties. The information was gleaned from employee compensation reports that school districts must post online.
Although starting teachers right out of college make roughly $40,000 in many area districts, they can earn well above $70,000 by age 30 if they get a master’s degree. And that’s for nine months’ work and most holidays off.
In the Troy schools, a 25-year teacher with a master’s degree and 30 extra hours of education can make $99,528.”
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20101118/METRO/11180420/High-teacher-salaries-under-scrutiny-in-Michigan#ixzz1SfJzs2sc
I have three friends that are tenured teachers of over 20 years. Each makes about $115,000. Sounds like the teachers are rolling in it, right? ‘Cept that in these parts, $100K is a good salary, but is not anywhere being rich. Not when starter houses start at $450,000 and property taxes that are $8,000 are considered low.
Husky, thanks for making a point, maybe not what you intnded but you made it anyway. Teachers were making above median so they aren’t terribly underpaid. I think that is pretty common now, eeven though the old saw that teachers are on starvation wages is still pushed by the NEA, it isn’t true anymore. I don’t begrudge teachers what they make but I also don’t want to be told how they are starving to death either, especially with their benefits package.
No, you got my point exactly. Teachers make a good living wage, at least for where I live. Not starving certainly, but not even remotely rich by any means. It is, in my opinion, a fair wage job. My bigger concern is that the bottom performing teachers get the same as the best teachers…yes, a byproduct of collective bargaining, but those top 40% teachers would likely not be teachers at all if the salary ended at $55K. So, we have a system that allows for some marginal performers to ensure we get some top performers…
@ mikey : I’ll have to GIS it, but I once saw a UAW bumper sticker where the phrase “Do Not Display On An Import” was superimposed on the letterforms of whatever pro-union message they had. Apparently this was enough of a problem that it became necessary :O
Was it on a Mexican or Canadian made car?
I recall the same thing on a Communication Workers of America sticker. The “Do not Display” was inserted in the Buy Union message…
I think this does register on the hypocrisy richter scale, but it’s more like ‘hey, a tile fell of the roof’ as opposed to ‘hey, a tsunami hit the coast causing a nuclear hellscape’.
It’s more like a tacit compliance with non-UAW labour as opposed to a vocal opposition to UAW labor (now THAT would be unacceptable hypocrisy).
It’s somewhat comparable with being and choosing to remain a national of a country which policies you don’t necessarily agree with all the time. A lot of Americans for instance feel a bit uneasy about Gitmo (or taxes or abortions etc etc), so you could say it’s hypocritical of them to continue writing their signature on the social contract that makes them Americans, cause in doing so they tacitly comply with the US’ policies, including the things they claim to condemn.
Technically, this is at least a bit hypocritical, but real world constraints kind of make it ok enough to give it a pass, as long as it’s not too blatant.
Jack is right, there is no solidarity.
That said, most people have no idea what cars are made where, by union or non-union labor.
I’m not giving the Toyota owner with a “No to 5” sign a pass – I’d expect almost anyone to know Toyotas are not built with union labor.
But someone driving a Fusion isn’t helping union labor either – though likely they don’t know that.
This is why I don’t have any stickers whatsoever on my car. Why invite others to speculate about your politics/religion/favorite product?
And, just because I can, I’m guessing the D.A.R.E. sticker is a sort of talisman to ward off the fuzz.
I’m ashamed to admit that all three of our cars were union-built in Dresden DE, Bratislava SK, and Hambach FR.
I always look for the non-union label, but the cars we have, we really wanted… besides, other than the cars from the US auto transplants, are there any other cars that are built by free workers?
No, free workers are called slaves.
Actually, no. Free workers are free from union dues, free from union thug enforcers, and free from soul-draining seniority rules.
Free workers are free to rise up thru the ranks based on work ethic, intelligence, creativity, leadership skills, and sheer ambition.
Free workers don’t have to wait until someone retires or dies to make $1 more an hour.
And free workers are also subject to things beyond their control, like a glut of foreign-born engineers working in the USA, which drives down wages, no matter how intelligent and hardworking those engineers are. The owners of the company know they are in the driver’s seat and they can get away with paying close to slave wages. And they are not paying more no matter how motivated you are. In time you become bitter and angry and stop giving a $hit.
A few points to consider:
1. Not all Toyotas were produced with non-union labor. I hate to beat a dead horse by bringing up NUMMI again, but it was developed with UAW support, and produced Toyotas and Pontiacs with better-than-average quality control. So in order to pass the union/non-union litmus test, you not only need to know the union position of the company in question, but the specific model and year.
2. Many of the best schools — the private schools rich people spend tens of thousands of dollars sending their kids to for a first-rate K-12 education — have no union presence whatsoever. Union membership for teachers has no direct correlation with quality of education. If so, then the Catholic schools would all suck, because there isn’t an education union presence in a single Catholic school in America. Not one. Yet the Catholic schools have consistently produced better-educated graduates on average. And that’s not to mention the expensive boarding schools which have alwas fed directly to the Ivy Leagues. Again, no unions.
3. That’s not to say that teachers’ unions aren’t needed. We can sit here and talk about how fat the benefits are, but that’s true of any gigantic labor force. Benefits were pretty fat for UAW workers, too, and I bet they don’t suck even now. But without the teachers unions, school administrators would overwhelm teachers with high teacher-to-student ratios, burn out young teachers, and replace them in three years with new graduates to keep the pay down. . . Wait. . . that’s what they do already. Never mind.
4. To bring this screed back to cars — How “union” does a car have to be to be “union”? Are we talking only about the final assembly? Are you seriously trying to tell me that a Ford Mustang, for instance, is a union car because its final assembly plant is a UAW plant? Never mind that it probably uses Chinese bolts, software produced in non-union Microsoft, leather produced by non-unionized ranches (though I’m not sure about the tannery), and on and on and on. What percentage, exactly, of the parts and materials in a new car needs to be produced by union labor to be a “union” car? And, does use of non-union materials necessarily result in poorer quality? I don’t think so.
5. Considering the Big Three’s policy of Planned Obsolescence which was in place for years, I can’t blame anyone for deciding to spend their meager, hard-earned teacher pay on a car that was simply designed to flat-out work for as long as possible, and eskewing American products that might be designed to fail before it’s even paid off.
“If so, then the Catholic schools would all suck, because there isn’t an education union presence in a single Catholic school in America. Yet the Catholic schools have consistently produced better-educated graduates on average. ”
Catholic schools get to pick and choose their students… same with boarding schools. Let’s see how well they do when they have to try to educate everyone by law. And for the most part, parents who are paying for a private education also invest the time into their kids educational success.
Private schools have a more well-behaved and higher-performing student body because parents paying tuition generally actually give a damn about their kids’ education. This allows them to pay teachers lower salaries and benefits, and the teachers put up with this without unionizing and demanding better because they’re significantly less likely to get shivved (or, for the elementary school teachers, they don’t need to put up with the day-to-day soul-crushing depression that comes from seeing a kid with potential get screwed over for life by having parents who don’t take the kid to school most mornings because they’re too drunk to get out of bed. You know, for instance.) Comparing test scores between private schools and public schools is asinine for basically this reason.
Parents who don’t give a damn about their kids are the elephant in the room for our country’s education problems. Nobody wants to start blaming them because they vote, so instead we start saying that it’s all them teachin’ unions fault. It’s a nice convenient scapegoat and everybody knows where the teachers are going to vote regardless. And hey, if you keep it up long enough, it’ll become true: teacher candidates in the US are getting worse and worse over time because anyone with talent will try and find a job where they might actually get a little respect.
I actually agree with you on this. Parents are the key to education.
aristurtle +1 Although I will freely admit that many of my colleauges need to get their heads out of their asses and start focusing on the things they can change (their teaching styles, some of the choices made in curriculum at the lower levels) but parents who won’t parent and then get pissed at the schools when we try to dicipine their kids for disruptiong other students education are a real problem.
You haven’t lived as an educator until a middle school kid gets caught with a tazer he brought from home and dad tries to blame the school for his kid getting in trouble. (true story)
I have several friends and relatives who are teachers, I don’t envy them the least.
My brother started his working life as a teacher in the Cleveland (OH) public schools back in 1980. He spent about two years trying to teach middle school kids math, but became so disillusioned with the state of the schools, he went back to university and got into the computer field. So many children had no support from their parents, he spent more time with keeping order in class than actually teaching anything of significance.
His wife went on to be a school superintendent in a fairly wealthy Cleveland-area suburb, but was very happy to retire last year. Besides state and federal mandates for all kinds of things she had burned out completely. Her number one complaint? Parents. All kinds of unreasonable demands for issues the schools have little control over.
A guy I go to church with is also a math teacher and football coach who teaches school in a pretty decent suburban Grand Rapids (MI) suburb, but has seen the quality of the students declining as time goes on. Less and less involvement from parents and a society that doesn’t value education nearly as much as it did 30 or more years ago.
59 years ago, my parents were immigrants to this country, and one of the main justifications my father made to my mother to come here was that the US education system was far superior to anything in Europe at that time.
Times have changed…
When parents spend their own money on their child’s education, they do what everyone does when they spend their own money – they ensure that it is spent well. Consequently, they kick their kid’s butts and make sure they learn.
When parents do not spend their own money on their child’s education and we have public leaders telling them that they are owed the education they are getting free – they do not value it. If your kids are owed a free education, what do you think the folks in charge did to make it free? They didn’t offer you the same education availabe at a price, right? That makes perfect logical sense. And if that stuff is owed you, then you have a right to demand what is owed, don’t you?
With half of our population not paying taxes, they do not value what they get. Worse, they demand even more from the rest of us because to offset any guilt for being moochers, they justify getting services free. They justify it by playing victim, and by being told by politicians that they are owed those free things.
This is why I see parents in public schools acting like victims, attacking teachers who try to teach their children, and behaving like spoiled children. Because they are spoiled. We have three generations of infantized adults, spoiled by politicians who take our money and give it away to them so that they can remain in office.
You want to be a teacher? Good luck – it sucks! Public schools suck.
…You want to be a teacher? Good luck – it sucks! Public schools suck…
Vanilladude: The secret to good public schools? They are in wealthy neighborhoods. There, the parents are much more like those in private schools. Heck, my high school was almost like a private school. The problem is that today a basic home in that neighborhood is just under one million. But at least you can write off your mortgage, something you can’t do with private school tuition.
Plus, the free market economy tends to always work out at the higher end of the market; when people have the money to spend, people usually find ways to deliver the goods in return for a comfortable compensation. The best teachers don’t need unions, cause they’ll get paid hansomely at private schools as long as they deliver the requested quality. I have no problem with this at all.
At the lower end though, without market intervention you end up with poor people (or rather, children who happen to be born to poor parents), getting poor education. Unions are one way to mitigate that problem at a cost less than the cost of having a nation with tons of poorly educated people.
Private school salaries are generally lower than public salaries and the benefits are much lower.
a nation with tons of poorly educated people…
What part of the failure of public education over the past fifty years have you missed?
We have tons of poorly educated people with high school diplomas. We have tons of poorly educated people who dropped out of high school. It has gotten worse, not better. If you look at the percentage of unionized teachers over the past fifty years, you see an increase in union membership as the figures showing poorer educational results also increases.
We also clearly know that union centric educational systems do a far poorer job teaching than non-union centril education systems. Unions are not doing what they are supposed to do.
Really? Even at the best prep schools? So who ends up with all that sweet cash wealthy parents are paying these schools? And, how do these B&B teachers not realize their market value? At the end of the day they must get enough out of it or (if they really are the best) they’d demand more.
Still; if some more money and more benefits is what it takes to attract decent teachers into teaching at public schools then to some extent; so be it. It’s likely to be a fraction of the future cost of not educating large amounts of people decently. Just because nobody has to account for that hidden oppertunity cost in his/her checkbook people like to neglect it but you can already see the societal cost everywhere around.
Human capital is capital that automatically adjusts to inflation.
My last comment on this thread. Finland kicks our butt in Education and is top of the heap in many global measures. One of the ways they achieve that is by being extremely selective about teachers and paying them VERY well and the government spends a ton of money on education oh and the schools themselves have a high measure of autonomy.
http://bertmaes.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/why-is-education-in-finland-that-good-10-reform-principles-behind-the-success/
It has been my experience that a teacher has to have a special passion for…TEACHING, and that requires a dedication to one’s chosen profession that demands a self-sacrificing spirit that is sorely lacking in too many cases, not becoming a teacher for the tenure/continuing contract as a way of staying employed and having a guaranteed paycheck. My daughter does have that passion, and is very good at what she does and is recognized for that quality.
Being cash wealthy is not a given. Cash wealthy people make decisions that results in cash wealth. One of those decisions is putting their money into a child’s education that gives them a return for their cash.
It is the habit of cash wealthy people to see where their cash goes that creates schools where other people spend their cash in order to get a better educational result. It is the demand that cash wealthy people put into those organizations that receive their cash, that keeps those organizations delivering a valuable product.
On the other hand, we have public education with all it’s hidden costs. You have no rights on where your child goes to public school. You have few rights regarding how much you pay towards that school. You have to pay regardless of if you have children. You have to pay regardless of whether your children attend the school. It doesn’t matter how bad a public school becomes, because you are forced to send your money to it. Crappy schools kill neighborhoods, which drive down the real estate value which most public schools use as a basis for their financing.
People spend their own money better than people spending someone else’s money. As a result, private schools do a better job than public schools, or they would be out of business.
BTW, I am a union member, and have been for decades. I am intimately involved in public schools. I am a product of crappy public schools in two countries. My kids go to private schools.
In terms of Finland, I think being a very small country with a homogeneous population who all speak the same language and with limited immigration has as much to do with it as how much they pay teachers. See Japan, Korea, etc for similar outcomes but larger countries.
Here is the US, I am not aware of any correlation between spending on education and outcomes but this isn’t my field.
@sfbiker
All Toyotas built in Japan are Union-made by the way! The UAW really would like for no one to know that.
But if japanese unions are like swiss unions, then not much in the way of demands, or teeth, and probably not even allowed to go out on strike.
Well, unions make perfect sense in industries that are either oligopolistic or monopolistic, which would be: the US auto industry until about 1973, the US steel industry until about the same time, the US telecommunications industry until 1984 (a legally-protected monopoly), the US airline industry until about 1979, the US newspaper industry until about 1995, the US broadcast (TV and radio) industry until about 2000, and, of course, government services.
See a pattern here?
I say they “make perfect sense” because monopoly or oligopoly industries have pricing power. So, as long as consumers are getting screwed, might as well let workers have a piece of the action.
In competitive industries, unions are a problem because they restrict the company’s ability to reduce costs. The result is that unionized manufacturing companies have two options to reduce labor costs to meet competitors’ prices: replace workers with machines, or move production to a non-unionized location, either domestically or in a foreign country.
Which, perhaps, explains why the last stronghold of unionism is the public sector.
So, the real takeaway from Jack’s post is that everyone responds to price, and once markets become competitive, then price is what matters, not the “union label.” Not to mention the fact, that the whole “buy domestic” becomes pretty complicated when you have Fords made in non-union Mexico (Fusion) and various Hondas, Toyotas, Subarus, BMWs, and Hyundai’s made in the U.S.
What people ought to find frightening, or at least food for thought, is that the Fusions coming out of Mexico have established a long record of quality, which is more than you can about any number of Chrysler products coming out of union plants in the United States and Canada.
Recent videos of unionized Chrysler workers drinking quarts of beer and toking up on joints on their lunch break — while sitting on a vacant lot owned by the UAW local — don’t help the situation either.
I’m a History major from a sixth-rate state school. I have a Master’s in English from the same school. I work as a paralegal at a big law firm. I make more than a teacher, twice as much as a starting teacher. And my benefits rock. I have had no trouble whatsoever finding work and keeping it, even in this economy.
Just thought I’d throw that out there.
‘Universal solidarity’ is kind of dumb, IMO. And being in one union (or supporting one union) while not supporting ALL unions is no more hypocritical than being in the oil & gas industry, supporting the industry, but deciding to never buy any bp products because of their HSE failures.
The expectation of blind support for all entities that are in the same line of work as you denies you:
– the ability to differentiate between brands,
– the freedom to judge value on what is important to you, and
– the capacity to promote progress by supporting/rejecting good/bad products (including labor agreements).
If the car had a “support the teachers’ union” and a “my child is an honor student at ___________ private school,” then I would feel fine branding them as hypocrites.
Precisely why Senate Bill 5 will pass here in Ohio. Governor Kasich said he was elected to balance the Ohio’s budget as he did under Clinton in ’95-’96.
Maybe Toyota owners will consider a Cruze from Lordstown, Ohio, for their next purchase.
I wonder if they’ll care that the Cruze’s engineering was done in Korea.
Or that Toyota’s NA engineering headquarters is across the river from Cinci.
Or that Honda builds the Accord in Marysville and does R&D work in Ohio.
Or that slews of Ohio 1st and 2nd tier manufactures supply OEMs all over North America.
Toyota also designs the North American cars in the design center in …….Michigan!
http://www.toyota.com/about/careers/ttc/
I think that the labor movement made a bad strategic decision when they decided to put their eggs in the public employee basket.
Regardless of how you feel about private sector labor unions, you’ve probably had an a$$hole of a boss. So you can naturally sympathize with a member of the working class. You’ve been in his or her shoes. However, creating a public employee union automatically makes you unsympathetic because they’ve put you on the other side of the negotiating table. I can’t be sympathetic to public employee unions, I’m management.
This is outside of the fact that so many public employees are rude and belligerent to the public. They expect deference from the public. A couple of weeks ago I had a consumer affairs person in the Post Office hang up on me. Can you imagine that happening in the private sector? In the private sector, a CSR gets fired if they hang up on a consumer.
Public employees, including teachers, act entitled and expect us, their bosses, to show them deference. They act as if we have no say in their behavior and they routinely use the machinery of government to retaliate against members of the public.
Public employee unions should be illegal. They are corrupt organizations who buy off the politicians who negotiate with them. Frankly, I’m not even 100% sure that public employees, besides the military, should even have the right to vote.
Also, I should note that Grateful Dead Productions was never a union shop. Some of the Dead may have tilted left politically, but they lived out their careers as libertarians.
Unions form when the relationship between labor and management becomes adversarial rather than constructive and collaborative. There’s no reason why this would be exclusive to the private sector. You may vote in a mayor or city council; you often might even get to vote in a school board. You usually don’t get to vote in a school superintendent. You never get to vote on who is the school principal.
Public employees, on the bottom of the scale, work like private employees. That CSR that hung up on you? You’re not that person’s boss. Her boss is, well, her boss, probably in an office next to the cubicle farm. His boss is somewhere else in the building, and you have at least five or six more levels before you get to an elected official. (For USPS, that elected official is The President Of The United States, who appoints the Postmaster General who appoints etc. etc. etc. Six levels is a very low estimate here.) Ranting to a public sector employee “I’m the taxpayer so I’m your boss!” is like going to a private sector employee and yelling “I’m the customer and the customer is always right!”. It’s stupid and more than a little childish.
I’ll tack this on to Ronnie’s post – because he is often clear thinking about stuff and all…
What I see this car, I see an old person. Or, a young person who thinks old. A young geezer. Someone who is sitting in the catbird seat and thinks they ended up in it by right. We all know folks like this, and they are very sincere and often taut their superior morals or education – or both. Nothing wrong with that, right?
So, to me, this isn’t about unions or about driving a non-union car – this is about an obsolete way of thinking. This driver wants to save the world – their way. They are disinterested in listening to any opposing views. They are opposed to judgemental people, except when it is they who are doing the judging. They are a keeper of the flame, when it seems to everyone around them that they are more interested in keeping their own flame at everyone else’s expense.
This driver has no monopoly on stupidity, or hypocracy. We all have our own axes to grine.
That said, unions have dropped to 7% of the US workforce. Most of them are tax-eaters, in that their careers are tax-based. They depend upon the productive folks in their communities to earn enough money for them to sponge off of. They don’t want their hosts to scrape off any barnacles or parasites, because they know they are one of them. Ohio LOST population over the past decade – so there are fewer host for this driver and other similarly thinking drivers to be parasite off of. Reality dictates that something be done. When you are a begger – you really shouldn’t be choosing how much you get per beg. Somehow, this mentality is missing from that Camry bumper, isn’t it?
They voted themselves rich. They will continue to vote themselves rich, even if that means the kids they teach are $100,000 in debt from birth. The driver of this car feels contented and justified in their contentment.
“Now – just hand me my money and NO ONE gets hurt!”, as they sped off in their old lady Camry to their vacation home in Scottsdale.
“They voted themselves rich.”
Yeah, I know when I see a public school teacher, I think “whoa, that person is loaded!” Particularly when they’re driving around a beat-up ’90s Camry. Teachers — livin’ the high life!
And hey, I know the best way to get qualified people teaching your kids (rather than applicants that have trouble with the damn content exam for elementary education) is to constantly yell that all teachers are beggars and moochers, sponging off of you to prop up your useless existence. Brilliant!
You wasted your money.
You dropped too much money into college for a career that isn’t going to pay as much as other careers at the same price.
That was your decision, and it was a poor one.
Don’t expect a community to offset your poor college choice by coughing up money they do not have. Furthermore, it seems that anyone incapable of making a decent economic choice, complaining about that choice, and refusing to take responsibilities for those personal choices – has nothing to teach anyway.
The best person qualified to teach children are the child’s parents. And a teacher can offset those areas of education the parent cannot teach. Don’t get all high and mighty thinking that teachers are invaluable – because we know they are not. See the salaries? You got your answer!
No one gets a halo upon graduation. Your assumptions that society cannot exist without teaching assumes that the only way to become a teacher is the way you have done so.
And that would be obviously incorrect.
Sorry for being so vicious, but that sacred cow you are riding is not sacred – and right now we need beef more than milk.
For the record, I’m an engineer; my wife is becoming a teacher. But, uh:
and right now we need beef more than milk.
This. This right here. This attitude of “screw the golden eggs; that goose is going to be delicious!” is what’s running our country into the ground. If American workers and businesses are having trouble competing with foreign ones now, just wait until our education system slips a bit more. After all, we can’t afford to invest in the future!
Your little monologue on economic choices: news flash, buddy: it’s already happening! Congratulations, you won! Competent people with math and science degrees now leave college and note that as teachers, they’d make no money and get little respect from students, parents, and school administrators. So now there’s a chronic shortage of qualified math and science teachers in American high schools. Which results in (in the short term) fewer American students at American universities, and (in the long term) fewer qualified professors at American universities. Which results in a shortage of qualified American engineers and scientists. This isn’t some hypothetical future I’m talking about; we’re already most of the way there. Can’t build a whole nation’s economy on slinging garbage bonds on Wall Street and selling each other cheap Chinese goods at Wal-Mart.
But hey, it’s cool. We just re-modeled our space policy after Arthur Dent, after all. Some other country can take the lead for a while, right? After all, we need the beef today more than the milk tomorrow.
edit: whoever wrote the code that handles HTML tags in posts needs to learn how to use regexes properly
I sure regexes-reflux is nothing that a little Malox can’t set right.
I’m still thinking cancelling Constellation makes sense … there doesn’t seem to be any great benefit to presently chasing diminishing returns on the manned inter-planetary thing…
The technology to get to Mars is not unknown, it is more a question of scalability, and frankly, the money is better spent not having to lift and support human bodies to and from a distant planet … we can get much further, much faster, doing it with probes which are so much easier to boost into orbit and send on their way to who knows where and for whatever purpose.
Flying to Mars on a scaled-up Apollo, or going back to the Moon with a modern Apollo, doesnt make a lot of sense, and while it is sexy, it really isn’t the most efficient way to go about things, and the high fixed costs slow down the pace of obsolescence and redesign…
We are likely to have cumulatively learned, and to learn more from the two relatively cheap Voyager probes even now, and from the Hubble, than we ever learned by setting foot on the Moon. As an engineer, I tend to think that unless you can’t do it remotely, sending a man there to do it is not much more than a publicity stunt.
@aristurtle: +1
All you have to do is watch Jaywalking on the Tonight Show and see people who don’t even know the capitols of their own states, to see how far the educational system has fallen in America today.
The ironic thing is…same people who want to gut unions, are the same people who want to gut public education and put everything on a “voucher” basis. Just to make sure that only those who have sufficient MONEY can get a decent education. Which is sort of the point, I think.
All unions are not the same. It seems that it is just decision that folks that risk their lives in ensuring public safety have pensions. Policemen, Firemen and guys that get in those buckets to fix faulty wiring 100 feet up seem like the obvious folks. HR people, IT people, accountants, data entry clerks, administrative staff, etc. should not get a pension. They should have access to a 401k plan, as that would put them on par with their private sector counterparts.
We’re in austere times, although the state and fed governments should always be working in austere times. It’s not their money they’re working with.
However, those heroes you describe are the biggest abusers of the system by far. Yet they get the sacred cow treatment. Sorry but anybody joining the Fire Department at 20 and retiring at 40 is being allowed to go for that milk big time. At least a 25 year career should be the absolute minimum. Do the uniformed deserve more for the risk? Yes. But some of the abuses are ridiculous.
Robert.Walter had it basically correct, in a “right to work” state, employees can’t be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. When a facility is unionized in a right to work state, the non-union employees get to ride on the coat-tails of collective bargaining by the union even though they don’t pay the dues. The free-rider situation can be a big problem.
I’m a rare-breed, I’m a unionized attorney. My union is pretty weak, but still, I think my union dues are worth it because it’s the only protection that I have against arbitrary and capricious firing. If I’m fired, I want to deserve it.
My wife is a unionized teacher. Teachers unions have been made the scapegoats for everything that is wrong in education, parenting and local government. If you want quality, experienced teachers, you aren’t going to get it by creating a profession where there is no job security, no protection against arbitrary firing, perverse incentives for age-discrimination and increasingly family-unfriendly work hours. (Some charter schools require 7AM-7PM work schedules.)
It is false to say that bad teachers can’t be fired. Teachers can always be fired for cause; but the unions demand due process before the teacher loses a career-job. Teachers often move for their job. Most teachers get a master’s degree, sending years at least five years and $100,000 to get into a job and a career with very little upward mobility. Once a teacher has several years in, it gets harder for them to get employed somewhere else because new teachers are cheaper. In short, teachers are very invested in their jobs. It’s simply unfair for a system to allow them to be fired on a whim. Wouldn’t you want to receive notice of the charges against you and have the opportunity to contest the charges before you lose something important to you? Within the first two years in most districts any new teacher can have a contract non renewed without any justification. Many principals are too busy/lazy to do detailed reviews of new teachers. If they won’t fire the bad new teachers, it’s unrealistic to expect them to fire the bad old teachers.
As far as the UAW is concerned, the UAW is in a difficult position, right in the crosshairs of globalization. If I had the answer to all of the challenges that confront the UAW, I’d be too busy flying my private jet to post on this board. Personally, all else being equal, I would prefer to buy a UAW-made car, but the problem is that in many segments there aren’t any or many union-made cars to choose from. Of the top selling, popularly-priced midsized segment, only one is union-made, the Chevrolet Malibu. The others are backmarkers, namely the Dodge Avenger, Chrysler 200, the Mitsubishi Galant and (for a while) the Mazda6. Because of the lack of choices, I am reluctant to throw stones at union members who don’t buy union-made products.
First, the Camry in the photo: That model is the most “American” styled car the Japanese or any foreign manufacturer has ever produced! We chose our ’99 Stratus over one of these based on cost. $14,400 vs. $22K! The Stratus looked foreign, too! This also was the first (and so far only) time I have ever literally driven a new car off the showroom floor!
Second: All the stickers. Anyone who slaps anything on their car (my Batman sticker on our old 1980 LeBaron excepted) should be flogged!
Third: The stickers themselves. Anyone who goes around sloaneering about anything – their personal beliefs, politics and such – I have no use for them. I once had a boss who used sloganeering at all our meetings, passing out flyers with stuff on them designed (he thought) to motivate us. It motivated me to have a showdown with him at break time. I actually won, too – respectfully, of course!
Fourth: Unions. My dad was in a union – he was a machinist – he hated it, as never in his long career has the union ever did anything for him except remove money from his wallet for dues and time for useless union meetings. In fact, his company went on strike in fall, 1967, and it wasn’t pretty for us, as we were working-poor and, although I never learned the details, some of our close relatives helped us out. As I was working my first job when a junior in H.S., I offered my meager pay to them (I was an only child), Mom and Dad turned me down – stoic German family, and proud of it – I inherited that trait and have built on it. Later, when I worked at a grocery store making $1.92/hr. in fall, 1968, I had to belong to the union. Didn’t do a thing for me, either, especially having a cruel asst. manager who hired and fired so many kids they should have just propped the front doors open to accommodate all the comings and goings! Somehow, I lasted five months before I was fired for no reason and a couple of weeks later, a co-worker, who was the hardest-working kid I have ever met was also fired! Finally, a month or so later, that manager was at last canned. I always wanted to slug that guy! When I worked for Civil Service years later, I refused to join that union.
My father-in-law was a die-hard union electrician who actually worked out of the union hall and it worked for him fairly well. He wouldn’t go near a Wal-Mart, either! He retired in 1988. Unfortunately, he had to travel around the country for work, as he refused to work for low wages in right-to-work states, and that was hard on his younger kids and wife. That was his choice, though, and not a fault of the union’s.
My daughter is a teacher in a neighboring school district near us, and she sees what goes on and wants no part of it, as so much politics are involved, let alone the phonyness of it all as to ideology and what has happened to the system in this country.
Union solidarity is rare these days. Like you said, employees of public unions often drive foreign-brand cars. My wife’s brother and his wife are life-long union members of the teachers union. Retired at age 55 out of the New Mexico public school system and then moved to Las Vegas, NV, where they continue to teach at full scale. And now, at age 65, after ten years of teaching in NV, they are eligible for yet another full retirement from a public school system. And what do they and their kids drive? Not UAW-made cars and trucks. Since 1980 it’s been Volvo, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, and now a Hyundai Sonata and a Nissan Murano. And they too are against taking away bargaining power from a teachers union.
Union solidarity seems to be weaker than projecting the right image to one’s left leaning peers. Thus, my lefty brother in SE Michigan owns a Toyota Prius from Japan instead of a union built Ford or Chevy. He’s moving his family from a funky neighborhood in Ypsilanti with a “diverse” urban public school population to a significantly more wealthy neighborhood in Ann Arbor months after his son turned 5. My brother has spent time on the picket line at the University, but he has zero personal connection to union auto workers building cars at nearby plants.
“He’s moving his family from a funky neighborhood in Ypsilanti with a “diverse” urban public school population to a significantly more wealthy neighborhood…”
Oh boy, are you opening up a can of worms! The fact of the matter is: (I’m going back years) At one time, no matter where schools were located, for the most part, AND segregated, the educational system worked much better, right or wrong. That way, one did not worry too much about “offending” someone, as everyone was treated the same, because we were all the same – color and social class – and teachers and especially coaches got away with stuff you’d risk being shot for today.
I won’t touch on politics or ideologies!
It isn’t just politics or ideologies. More often it is appearances. I spent Monday and part of yesterday in California studying the advisability of acquiring a failing domestic-brand dealership that was offered to my brothers’ company by the manufacturer’s finance arm.
Initially I was set to make one recommendation because the data and facts looked good in spite of the fact that this dealership had not been able to cover annual operating expenses for the past four years. As new owners you can always fire people to shave costs.
But an on-site visit on Monday revealed its location in an older part of the city made up largely of multi-ethnic minorities, and since that dealership could not be moved to a better location I had to change my original assessment.
Driving around the neighborhood we saw very few newer cars, and people were not going to drive from miles around to visit this dealership in this neighborhood. Apparently this accounted for the decline in sales over the past ten years.
People who can, move.
My first 4 attempts to comment must have vanished into cyberspace. Robert.Walter is basically correct. In a “right to work” state you can’t be required to join a union. If your facility is unionized in a RTW state, the union must collectively bargain for all employees including those who didn’t join the union. This creates a difficult “free rider” problem.
My wife is a unionized teacher. Thank goodness. Teachers unions have been unfairly made the scapegoats for everything that is wrong in education, parenting and state and local government and finance. If you think getting rid of teachers unions will encourage better teaching, you’re dreaming. What individual with choices will enter a profession with decreasing pay, decreasing benefits, no job security and (in charter schools at least) family-unfriendly hours? (Some charter schools require their teachers to work 7AM-7PM days.)
Almost all teachers have 4 year college degrees then go through an unpaid student-teaching internship. Most are expected to get masters degrees. This means they invest 5-6 years and at least $100,000 of their own and borrowed money to enter the profession. Teachers often move (at their own expense) to take a teaching position. In short, teachers have a lot invested in their jobs. It’s not too much for them to ask in return for some protection against arbitrary discharge. Teachers always can be fired for cause even in unionized environments. The union just requires due process. Even in unionized districts, teachers can be fired (or non-renewed) at will, without a showing of cause, within the first 1-2 years. Right now too many principals aren’t taking the time to evaluate, correct and/or fire the new teachers that they can fire at will, so there’s very little evidence that eliminating due process for experienced teachers will solve our education problems.
Sounds good, but everything you say about teachers is true for every private sector employee. It’s tough out there and we private sector people just deal with it, your wife should too. By the way, give examples of decreasing pay, benefits and the like. I’d like to hear about that and compare private sector problems with you.
To get to the heart of Jack’s argument that it’s hypocritical to demand unionized teachers and drive a non-unionmade car. Maybe, but you choose your battles. You aren’t always faced with perfect choices.
I live in Ohio as well, and it sure does set up an interesting fall ballot as far as the schools go. I fully expect to see a bunch of school levies on the ballot, along with an effort to repeal the bill that Jack referred to.
One thing that has not been commented on is that if they build the language in the previously passed Senate Bill 5 into some sort of budget bill, it will very likely survive the recall attempt. This option is being saved as a last resort (by the fiscal conservatives) in case the recall is successful.
There remains the possibility that the car in question doesn’t belong to a union member. Not everyone against 5 is a public employee.